


Your Beauty, Your Worth

by DrJekyl



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, F/F, Fade to Black, Fae & Fairies, Pearl is not a useless lesbian for once, Rose that's really gay, The Crystal Court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 23:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12068838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl
Summary: Desire, denial, doubt.  Seelie or Unseelie, only one of these comes naturally to the Fae.  Rose, late of the Court of Spring, struggles with all three, and the newly-liberated Pearl is starting to run out of patience.





	Your Beauty, Your Worth

**Author's Note:**

> As with others in this collection, it makes most sense if you've, er, [read some of the others in the collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/SU_CrystalCourt).

Rose, late of the Court of Spring, was many things, but accustomed to denying herself was not one of them.  

She was learning, though, day by day, and, day by day, grew prouder of her own ability to resist temptation.  And so even when that temptation made her breath into a sigh and her body _ache_ with longing, she did not rise from her spot on the grass above the riverbank.  She did not shed her clothes and join her companion in the slow, clear water.  She did not caress Pearl’s soft cheek, did not run her fingers through her tousled hair, nor across the sweet bow of her lips, did not cup her chin and tilt her lovely face up in a silent demand for the kiss she was due.  

She did not.

She wanted to, though.  Oh, _how_ she wanted to.  And she wanted to do more besides.  It would be so easy, to gather her Pearl up into her arms and bear her back up the bank and beneath the trees.  Easier still to lay her down there, upon the softest grass Rose could summon - nothing harsh for her, nothing rough, never again - screened from the world and from prying eyes by a thicket of thorns.  Easiest of all to worship her; with lips and tongue and hands until she sighed and quaked and turned Rose’s name into the very sweetest of songs.

But Rose did not.  She _would_ not.  Not until she had worked out how to be certain that any response to her advances would be genuine.  That it would be what Pearl herself wanted.

 _Doubt_ was something Rose was even less accustomed to than _denial_.  It was a deeply alien feeling, perhaps the strangest and most uncomfortable of all of the new emotions that Pearl had somehow awoken within her.  Who wanted to think their own thoughts again, and in different ways?  Who could possibly want to worry about how their actions might be perceived by another?  What sense did it make for someone else’s feelings to be just as important, to be _more_ important than your own? It was utter madness, the world turned upside down and back to front, and she missed the certainty of her self-centeredness like breathing. 

But if doubt and denial were the price of experiencing love as the mortals felt it, then she would think and re-think and worry and dream wistfully for the rest of her life and regret it not one day, not one whit.   _That_ was a new kind of certainty, one exquisitely bittersweet and bursting to life in her chest every time Pearl looked at her and smiled, or touched her arm, or carded her fingers through Rose’s hair in a futile attempt to tame it.  Pearl’s shy smiles, her rusty laughter, her burgeoning happiness were the foundations upon which Rose could build a new existence herself.  One where she, too, did not just exist, but _lived_.

And so, denial.  And so, doubt.  And so the growing, strange worry, something close to fear, that all those mortals over the centuries, mortals come so enthusiastically to her bed to enamour Rose with their inventiveness and vigor, may have had just as little say in events as any human dragged off by an Unseelie courtier.  Had they truly desired her?  Or had they simply been swayed by her Charm and her glamour?  Had she loved fairly, giving and taking pleasure in equal turn, or had she simply _used_ them to satisfy her own needs, her own curiosity?

Pearl spoke little of her time amongst the Unseelie, but Rose knew it had been too long for her to have escaped that kind of use and worse.  In this new life of hers, just now entering its second year, Rose wanted Pearl to escape that, and more.  Another strange, bittersweet certainty to stay her hand and live by.

That thought drew forth another sigh, this one just loud enough and long enough to capture her companion’s attention.  Pearl glanced back over her shoulder at her, concern evident.  Before Rose could call out to reassure her, she’d ducked her head under the water to rinse clear the soap, and then was starting for the bank.  Rose’s hands twisted themselves together in her lap.

Pearl was an arrow, she sometimes thought: sharp edges, clean lines, sparse frame, but all the deadlier for it.  The thought came to her again now, as Pearl moved swiftly and purposefully towards her.  Not a scrap of excess fat upon her body to for the water beading her skin to cling to, centuries of ceaseless work, from dancing for hours to fighting for days to waiting on feasting courtiers at their tables for months on end, had honed her body to its physical peak.  Not bulky, not fit to burst from her skin like the massive champions Summer favoured, but compact muscle defined so well that Rose was certain she could trace the border between each if she wanted to, or follow every taut tendon and sinew from start to finish.

And she did.  Want, that was.  Rose wanted to, like breathing.  To start with Pearl’s hands, so quick and clever, and kiss each of those long, calloused fingers, press her cheek to each roughened palm.  Press her lips, then, to the points of her wrists, each in turn, and feel her jumping pulse, so close to the skin.  Move immediately to the graceful arch of her neck, have those strong, slender arms wrap around her own shoulders, tangle in her hair, Pearl’s breathy sigh hot in her ear.  Bear them both down, down to the grass, her mouth down to the ticklish hollow of Pearl’s throat, down to her breasts, small and neat and perfectly keeping with the rest of her, down along the flat planes and faint lines of her belly, down to the rising bones of her hips, down-

Pearl cleared her throat, and Rose found her eyes belatedly jumping up to meet Pearl’s, sky-blue and glittering with amusement.  Rose felt her cheeks grow hot, swiftly followed by her ears and her neck, the strange, squirmy feeling of wanting to hide her face or run away rising within her.  Embarrassment, Pearl had suggested, when Rose had first blushed and pressed her hands to her cheeks in surprise and uncertainty.  Another alien feeling, and such a contradictory one too, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.  She wasn’t at all sure if she liked it, or wanted to keep having it.  But Pearl blushing for her was such a delightful experience, it hardly seemed fair not to offer her the opportunity to appreciate Rose’s own blushes in return.

Fairness was important, she’d learned.  True, real fairness, not the arbitrary imbalanced trades her people, she’d discovered, were notorious for.  Tit for tat. Taking without giving, giving only with expectation of greater returns - that was what made you a monster.

“Rose?”  Pearl’s amusement was all-too-evident now, not just in her eyes but in her smile, and the laughter beneath her voice.  “Do I need to ask what you’re thinking, or should I just assume?”

She cocked her head to the side as she said it, hand alighting on her hip, as if holding a conversation while stark naked and dripping wet were an ordinary, everyday occurrence (would that it were, reflected Rose’s imagination, wistful and vivid, _oh_ , would that it were).  Rose, having found her eyes slipping lower again, quite coincidentally found that it was possible for a blush to intensify in the most remarkable fashion, to the point she feared she might catch afire.  From something other than longing.

Rose took a moment to regain herself and rein in her runaway imagination.  Eyes closed, she breathed in and out, focusing on the sun against her skin, the grass beneath her legs, the hint of honey and pollen on the wind.  She was strong, she was powerful, she was a master of herself instead of others.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when she opened her eyes again, certain of herself.  “I got carried away.  I shouldn’t have.  How was the water?  It looked lovely-”

Pearl’s expression of amusement started to slip as soon as Rose began to speak, frowning down at her, first in confusion, and then, to Rose’s own befuddlement, outright exasperation, her shoulders visibly sagging even as her head tipped and her eyes rolled skywards, an irritated sigh escaping her lips.

“Rose- Rose, stop,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose.  “I know what you’re doing.  And I appreciate it, and, well, I suppose it’s even somewhat _sweet_.  When looked at from a certain perspective.  But looked at from _another_ it’s-” Pearl waved her hand vaguely in the air, ”entirely unnecessary."

She took a step forward, and then another, and then her hand was reaching out and down to cradle Rose’s cheek.

“Your glamour doesn’t work on me, Rose. You made sure of that, remember?” Pearl said, and Rose did, vividly, remember that moment, from the clink of the clasps of Pearl’s cuirass and her laboured, faltering breaths, her clouding grey eyes, to Rose’s own fear, verging on terror, as fumbled for the words she’d researched but never rehearsed, voice shaking more than her hands, clumsy and fat-fingered in their haste.  The trust repaid with trust, wonder met with wonder, bonds broken, never to be remade.

“If I find you charming,” Pearl said, holding her eyes, “it’s because you _are_.  If I think you’re beautiful, it’s because it’s the truth.  And if I-” Her voice shook slightly, and a blush rose high on her cheeks, tinting them a delicate shade of pink. A lovely testament to the promise of her- _their_ newfound existence, colour and life where none had been permitted before.  Pearl cleared her throat, and continued, softly, but with that note of determination in it that Rose so very adored. “And if I want you, it’s because I do.”

“Oh.”

“‘ _Oh_ ’, she says,” Pearl told the open sky, some of her former amusement and exasperation returning to colour her voice, along with a well-honed theatricality.  “There, ladies and gentlemen, lords and ladies, is the famous wit and eloquence that won me, but a humble servant of Winter, over so completely to Rose of the Spring.”

Rose found her own blush returning, and found her gaze slipping downwards again. Heavily, nothing like the sweetly aching way of just moments ago, more a burden than temptation.

“I just… I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do.”

“I know,” Pearl said, her voice gentle.  “But you trust me with your Name.  You can trust me to know what I want too.”

“What do you want?” Rose asked, and felt a shiver run up and down her spine, settling cold in her chest, hot in her belly, at once desperate and terrified to hear the answer.

The hand against her cheek slipped beneath her chin, the gentle pressure urging Rose up onto her knees, so that they were almost of a height.  It felt _right_ , somehow, to kneel before Pearl like this, hands still twisted together like a penitent before their altar, and she was reminded of her earlier thoughts of worship.  There were far, far less worthy gods with greater followings.

Pearl stepped forward again, close enough to her now that Rose could count the clear droplets still clinging to her skin, follow one as it broke free of a whorled lock of soft, damp hair, trailed down that noble brow to the soft, still blush-brushed and rosy cheek, and finally outlining the jaw that had, with its firm set and delightfully defiant tilt, figured in many a daydream Rose had harboured to date.

“I want _you_ ,” Pearl said.  “I want…” her thumb brushed across Rose’s lips, a feather-light invitation to part them which Rose gratefully took, and her next word was little more than a soft exhalation.  “This.”

Rose swallowed hard, unable to tear her eyes away.  The touch of Pearl’s hand upon her skin burned in a way quite unlike blushing did, a deep, radiating heat flowing inwards to quicken her heart, her breath in her lungs.

“I want-”

“Yes?”

Pearl wet her lips and exhaled shakily.

“I want you,” she said, with slow, quiet, deliberate determination that made Rose glad she was already kneeling, “to take your dress off.  And then I want you to kiss me.  And then I don’t want you to stop unless I tell you so.”

“Oh,” Rose said, and when Pearl continued to hold her eyes, searching, she realised that something more was expected of her, added: “Alright.”

Pearl laughed again, pure and joyful and light, utterly unburdening in a way that made Rose feel like they would both float away if their attention slipped for a moment.  Then Pearl leaned forward and kissed her, and kissed her again, and drew Rose’s arms around her waist.  And Rose, for her part, did as instructed, and let herself be guided back against the soft grass, and discovered that if denial and doubt did not come naturally to her, worship, in fact, came like breathing.


End file.
